1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer systems and software and particularly relates to computer systems and software associated with the delivery of items such as parcels (a.k.a. “packages”) that have been shipped by a shipper via a delivery service provider (hereinafter “service provider”), to an intended recipient (a.k.a. “consignee”).
2. Description of Related Art
Presently, carrier management systems (CMS) allow users to ship packages through one or more carriers. CMS assist the user in choosing a carrier based on cost, efficiency or other defined characteristics. Typical users may be, for instance, corporations or business entities having shipping departments and retail shipping facilities such as MAIL BOXES, ETC.®, THE UPS STORE®, KINKO′S®, STAPLES®, etc. MAIL BOXES ETC. and THE UPS STORE are registered trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. KINKO'S is a registered trademark of Kinko's Ventures, Inc., of Dallas, Tex., and STAPLES is a registered trademark of Staples The Office Superstore, LLC, of Framingham, Mass. Generally, a typical shipping location will have one or more user terminals that access a CMS data center over a network. In typical CMS applications, rating data and other carrier specific information is generally maintained only at the CMS data center to facilitate updates/changes and minimize duplication.
A challenge faced by present CMS is the loss of communications between the data center and the user terminal. This may be caused by network outages and/or hardware or software problems at either the data center or the user terminal. Regardless of what the cause of the loss of communications, in many instances it may lead to the inability to pre-process, process and ship packages from the shipping location.
Therefore, systems and methods are needed to overcome the challenges present in the art, some of which have been described above.